A successful business depends on discerning and acting on sale patterns while providing smooth, supportive service to customers at every phase. But as any manufacturer knows, the sales patterns that drive your business aren’t exactly self-evident. Rather, the data that informs such central factors often requires some high-tech guidance to understand. That’s where CPQ software comes in.

CPQ software not only helps smooth the sales, ordering, and billing process, but also offers analytic guidance that can predict market trends that impact your manufacturing and stock needs. If you’re ready to expand your distribution channels, you need CPQ software. Adoption of this technology is at an all-time high, though, so don’t delay.

Standard CPQ Use In Sales

Most companies use CPQ software for a limited number of purposes – the product configuration, pricing, and quote development tasks from which it gets its name. The software also significantly reduces the time it takes to turn those quotes into complete business proposals, moving the process along as much as 75% faster. That kind of time and labor reduction can help put your business ahead of the competition, helping you gain an important competitive edge when trying to win contracts or orders.

CPQ software may also be the technology that helps your sales team meet and break quotas at an unprecedented rate. In 2015, reports projected that 34% of sales representatives would miss their quotas, pushing 2016 expectations even higher to make up the gap. By using CPQ software, your business will be well positioned to exceed sales quotas across all products.

The Analytics Answer

Many companies mistakenly believe that they need separate analytics software to crunch number for their business and predict sales trends across the year. In fact, CPQ software can also provide highly-developed insights into sales patterns, without the need to transfer sales data from one system to another or grapple with incompatible systems.

Especially for small and mid-sized businesses, CPQ software is a great alternative to IT-heavy programs, allowing smaller businesses to focus on growing their market share, instead of struggling with their software. The data provided can also help transform company-wide approaches to CRM, creating opportunities for engagement and follow-up that are data-based and providing opportunities for active lead development to expand your customer base.

The Breakdown: What CPQ Offers Your Distribution System

If you’re still uncertain about how CPQ software can benefit your business, here’s a handy breakdown of how this must-have tech sparks innovation and disrupts old business models.

Targeting what matters

CPQ software isn’t just about getting your customers from inquiry to order with minimal hassle – it’s about understanding what your customers want from the experience and what types of interactions offer added value in a sometimes impersonal business atmosphere.

CRM is often viewed as a technological consideration of its own, but when you combine all the analytic features of CPQ software with a commitment to customer service, not all companies need separate CRM software. We can work with you to determine whether an independent or CRM integrated platform is right for your business.

Seeing the patterns

The analytic capacity of CPQ software is more advanced than most businesses realize. Pay attention to the bigger trends your program points out to build up necessary inventory and prepare for seasonal rushes on popular products.

Cross-department engagement

Part of what makes CPQ software different from a lot of other business technology is that it crosses departmental and functional lines in complex but beneficial ways. In fact, for CPQ to really work for your business, you need buy-in from everyone – marketing, product managers and manufacturing team members, customer support, and IT.

You may also find that using CPQ software cuts your IT costs because, while there is a learning curve, issues previously handled by IT become the work of other departments. This is happening with a lot of SaaS programs today.

Program-driven purchasing

Because CPQ software has the analytic capacity to determine when orders will peak and what products will be popular, advanced CPQ data can reduce the work of the purchasing team. Right now, this tends to look like reports outlining expected sales volume and product breakdowns, but in the future we may see CPQ software that – as part of bigger machine to machine networks – can do that ordering for you.

Complex configuration

For some companies, product configuration isn’t a big concern – maybe your options are limited, or you offer a lot of different products, but they aren’t meant to directly fit together. But other companies depend on high-level configuration to assemble any given order.

Companies with this kind of ordering complexity can benefit from the configuration component of CPQ, reducing employee training time as well as the turnover rate from configuration to proposal and billing. Employee energy can be better allocated and the error rate is lower when configuration is in the hands of machines.

Combining channels

If your company offers several products that are currently housed in separate sales channels, CPQ software may be the tool you need to connect these disparate sectors. Without the help of CPQ software, it often seems easier to leave the channels under separate headings, but combining these channels can help build customer retention by simplifying the purchasing process.

CPQ: The Tools You Need

Is your business ready to make and break your sales quotas in 2016? If so, our CPQ software can give you the tools you need. Contact iQuoteXpress today to begin a free trial of our CPQ software. Our sales team can guide you through the process, helping you choose the tools your business needs, from contact management to centralized workflow, pricing, and personalized configuration tools.

Don’t settle for second best when choosing CPQ software for your business. No, with this technology leading the charge on lead development and distribution channel management, you need software from the name you can trust – iQuoteXpress.

We believe in the power of CPQ and after seeing our software in action, you will too.